China-Europe diplomatic ties at 50: Prospects and challenges

Editor’s note: Stephen Brawer is the chairman of the Belt and Road Institute in Sweden and a distinguished research fellow of the Guangdong Institute for International Strategies. The article reflects the author’s opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

This May marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Europe and China. If one is to consider the evolution of this relationship over the past five decades, it would be marked most clearly by the dramatic transformation of China’s economy for the better, beginning with the opening up of China under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s.

Since that time, China’s economy has been on a continuous upward spiral leading up to today’s leading role in manufacturing, and modern transportation infrastructure in the form of rapidly expanding fast trains, and new systems of magnetically levitated trains reaching up to 600km per hour. The new cutting edge in technological innovation in robotics, AI and digital tech, space travel and the development of new forms of nuclear power based on fusion technology and thorium powered power plants has put China in a leading position internationally for global development and stability as well as sustainability.

On the other hand, European economies have been on a general spiral downward. The modern industry and technologies which put European infrastructure at or near the top of world development in the 1960’s and 1970’s has been moving downward based on a dominant belief in a post-industrial, neo-Malthusian philosophy that considered world resources to be far too limited to provide for a growing world population. Cutting-edge technologies in energy infrastructure were abandoned in the name of environmentally preferable solar and wind. The general condition of both transportation and energy infrastructure in Europe has been collapsing based on neo-liberal financial policies.

However, due to the escalating risks of a trade war and tariffs coming from U.S. President Donald Trump, the possibility of improving China-Europe trade and business relations is on the rise. Because of the above-mentioned negative direction in European policy making, there has emerged a great dependency of European markets on economic cooperation with China. Most inside economic analysts in Sweden and Europe admit that without Chinese markets, the European economies would totally collapse.

Therefore, it is a positive direction for increased bilateral trade between China and Europe in areas like biomedical technologies, and those environmentally approved areas of solar energy and similar low intensity environmental technologies. However, politically, the EU maintains a virtual enemy image of China as a potential aggressor, whose political system is purportedly based on so-called “non-democratic autocracy” and “the abuse of human rights.” This false and baseless perspective is pointing to a major increase in military budgets to provide the necessary “security guaranties” against the dangers coming from supposed “Russian and Chinese imperialism.”

This geopolitical blindness is an obstacle to increased cooperation in those areas of hi-tech infrastructure of nuclear development and modern transport infrastructure directed to the Global South, including BRICS member countries, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and most fundamentally is a real obstacle to cooperation between the EU and China on the Belt and Road Initiative. This limits the framework to deepen collaboration between China and Europe to those areas such as green technology, AI, and the digital economy, which are clearly useful, albeit that they lack the most important element of real friendship, based upon a common cause for “a shared community for mankind.”

China has proposed the three global initiatives, which are the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative and the Global Development Initiative, as strategic visions for global cooperation. China has clearly outlined its vision for the coming 25 years and even beyond the one-hundred-year celebration of the founding of the PRC in 2049.

The mission to achieve justice and bring about the total elimination of poverty for the world’s populations is an unbreakable commitment for China’s leadership. The big question remains what direction Europe and the EU will choose to go in this very turbulent period of history. This was the theme of the latest webinar of the Belt and Road Institute in Sweden, “The EU and China in a Rapidly Changing World.” What direction Europe and the EU will take is still uncertain. Yet, we are at a crossroads in world history, with great potential and great danger simultaneously. As I emphasized in a recent conference:

The BRI has emerged out of the depths of history and philosophy. The more profound ideas of Chinese civilization and its counterparts in European Renaissance civilization provide the ideas for uniting East and West as well as North and South. Let us proceed on this pathway to give light and harmony to all peoples in these difficult times of 2025.